The following is an extended version of the article that appears in our August 2023 issue.
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John Pollard celebrates 20 years of his contemporary fine art gallery, Ada. Upcoming exhibitions include “Tiny Desirables,” Sept. 1-30; “Leif Low Beer,” Oct. 5-28; and “Salon Après Tetris (5 Seconds of Fame),” featuring the works of Shannon Wright, Nov. 3-25. (Photo by Jay Paul)
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The Bernard Martin show opening (Photo courtesy Ada Gallery)
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Sedrick Chisom from the artist talk for his exhibit “The Ghost of White Presidents Yet to Come” at Ada Gallery in January 2019. A musical performance by David Dominique followed. (Photo courtesy Ada Gallery)
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“Thaddeus LaCrette: The Imagination of King Seppy the African,” from February 2019 (Photo courtesy Ada Gallery)
In some respects, it’s all in the name.
Ada Gallery, now in its 20th year, is a commercial concern at 228 W. Broad St. with an adventurous past and a robust future. The creator, John Pollard, a Petersburg native and himself an artist, explains how the “ada” designation arose and the accompanying editorial confusion.
“My grandmother’s name was Ada,” he says. He intended the pronunciation as the same but altering the arrangement to “A.d.a.” to stand for “Artists Downtown Access.” Pollard applied this variation as a tribute to an art-related, San Francisco-based television public access program, for which he’d volunteered and served as facilities manager. After he commissioned a neon sign that capitalized the first “A” and wrote press releases that read “ADA,” confusion ensued.
Given the gallery’s history, the name debate is appropriate. Pollard brought a punk-rock sensibility to the scene and cultivated a roster of artists from this region and beyond.
Contemplating what’s kept him going during these past decades, he says, “I guess I like providing a place for strangers to wander in off the street and see something for the first time. Maybe they’ll have a little epiphany, maybe think about something for the first time or in a new way.”
He’s opened spaces in Richmond and New York, and in 2006 began attending the blossoming art fairs. The gallery at Madison and Broad streets opened for the June 2003 First Friday. At the time, the Arts District consisted mainly of 1708 Gallery, Artspace (since relocated, twice), Elegba Folklore Society, Corporate & Museum Frame, and the Visual Art Studio. During Ada’s early days, Pollard often complemented exhibitions with music, but with the arrival of spaces such as Black Iris, the performance aspect didn’t seem necessary.
The gallery has withstood various cycles of the city’s cultural scene exacerbated (or assisted) by the greater economic ups and downs that led to various effects on downtown real estate.
“We used to be open late,” Pollard says, looking across the years, “and we would do lots of video projections, live bands, a live talk show, a fashion show. The Anemone Dance Theater put on a thrilling and somewhat frightening Butoh performance.” Along the way there were giant installations and sculptures, and a big live game of Tetris.
Ada and Richmond’s millennial arts scene came of age together. When other venues opened that promoted similar fare, the gallery reined in some of its wild wooliness but also turned to other markets by branching out to art fairs in New York, Miami and Los Angeles.
“We started doing art fairs in 2006, first going to the Hamptons, New York, London, Switzerland and Miami,” Pollard recalls. “We quickly slowed down to just NYC and Miami because, though it was fun, it was wearing us out.” The gallery is returning to Miami again this year after taking a breather. Setting up a booth in these places is an expensive proposition, but presence can mean new collectors. As the old saying goes, if you want to catch a big fish, you go where the big fish swim.
“Collectors have so many choices, and there aren’t many collectors to begin with,” Pollard observes, “so it always seems like a little miracle when I sell a great painting.”
Art can be about improvisation and about making something work that doesn’t look as if it could. For instance, Pollard reflects, transporting giant sculptures to a Miami art fair or to a collector’s home where the work fit through the door by a matter of inches.
For a time, an Ada satellite shared a small space in the Lower East Side of Manhattan with the late Katharine Mulherin from Toronto called Mulherin + Pollard. The two shared a mutual vision for art. Toronto Life’s Katrina Onstad wrote how Mulherin “had no patience for obtuse art. She liked pieces that were tactile, funny, unfinished.”
People found the space, and the artists received favorable reviews in The New York Times.
There, Pollard spent the day with the singer Tony Bennett, an encounter he recalled prior to Bennett’s recent passing. “I was a stand-in the same day for the lighting for Lady Gaga, as it was their first photo shoot before the world knew they were working together. And when she came into the room and saw us lit up for the shoot, she exclaimed rather dramatically that we looked beautiful! So I can say Gaga thinks I’m beautiful, under the right lighting conditions, that is.”
Along the way Pollard has assisted not only in the advancement of younger, not well-known artists but also those in their late careers, as with his former professor George Kuchar. In his early days, Kuchar was at the forefront of underground comics with R. Crumb and Art Spiegelman, and in underground film with Andy Warhol and Kenneth Anger. Pollard brought Kuchar’s comics and paintings to art fairs, which reintroduced his work. Before Kuchar’s 2011 death from cancer, Pollard guided him showing at the Museum of Modern Art’s PS1 and the 2012 Whitney Biennial.
Closer to home, he also exhibited new and older paintings by the late Bernard Martin. Pollard credits master printmaker David Freed for the introduction. After meeting, Pollard exhibited Martin’s huge canvases of moments in popular culture until his 2021 death.
“I’m still going to be working for Bernard via his wife and son and his artwork,” Pollard says. “A few weeks ago, we had an open house at Bernard’s studio, and it was a fantastic time with decades of work on view. Bernard was a great artist and friend.”
Those whom he brought into Ada when they were still fresh paint include the then-Virginia Commonwealth University graduate student and painter of abstracted sea objects from nature Matthew F. Fisher. Others include Rosemarie Fiore, she of smoke and fireworks, painter and muralist Taylor White, and sculptor and installation artist Shannon Wright.
“By now I’ve exhibited thousands of artists,” Pollard reflects, “and it’s great to have been a part of their story. And I’m constantly meeting new young and older artists that I want to exhibit and give assistance.”
And then came something completely different.
In 2013 came an exhibition concerning the niche fascination with Electric Football. The show included vintage game boxes, boards and tiny football players painted with fastidious detail. This spawned a 2014 sequel and a 2015 championship convention. Meanwhile, books were published, and filmmaker Errol Morris created a short documentary for ESPN. Some Richmond tastemakers grumbled that such a display wasn’t gallery suitable.
“But whether it’s craft or hobby, it’s dedication, and addiction, and imagination, and delving into an inner world,” Pollard remarked in 2013, adding, “So from that respect, it’s closer to art than anything, I suppose.”
After all, art, however one defines the term, is a form of communication, and Ada seeks to provide artists with space in which an audience may absorb their message.
“Art is often a Rorschach test — everyone can see something different, make a different interpretation, some truth that you’re carrying around with you that suddenly starts to speak to the painting or vice versa. It’s exciting,” Pollard says.
The future of art depends not only on shifting phases of preference and critical opinions, but the media employed by the makers. The recent uptick in computerized, artificial intelligence-guided work is part of whatever is coming next. Pollard is philosophical on the subject. The tool matters less than the proficiency of the one using it.
Pollard acknowledges that computerized machines can cut marble and make detailed, almost masterful work; however, he adds, “There will always be a person with a chisel that can probably do it faster, most definitely cheaper, and it will retain a bit more of his soul. But I think it’s just a tool, so different strokes for different folks, but we’ll have to wait and see.”
Ada continues into the fall season with its own particular flavor. The show running Sept. 1-30 is titled in homage to a recent streaming series, itself based on a trilogy of fantasy novels, “Dark Materials.” The artists featured will include longtime Ada contributor Kirsten Kindler, with her fascinating and intricate paper constructions; the ceramics of Zimbabwe native Nyasha Chigama; photographer Steve Giovinco, whose visions of night skies include those of Antarctica and Greenland; and Jared Clark’s wild ceramics. Opening night will have music by Richmond legend and one-person band Gull.
Also in September, Pollard is debuting a monthly rotating exhibition for small works in the gallery’s back rooms, which he’s calling Tiny Desirables; the opening exhibit is titled “Put Down Your Pencils.”
Now close your workbooks and go view the art in person.
